WORDS THE DOG KNOWS excerpted in Geist #71

I love Geist Magazine. And not just because they just published an excerpt of my novel Words the Dog Knows in their latest issue (Winter 2008-2009 #17). No, I love Geist because they picked a particularly odd ball section of the novel to excerpt, a section that speaks to the very core of what the novel is about, a list of rhetorical words the dog-sitter is convinced the dog knows. As they put it over at Geist: “A human interprets the way a dog interprets the world of humans.”

Here are a few words from that list:

home Home is where they keep the kibble. Home is both the origin and the terminus of the walk. Locus of the soundest sleeps, at home all scents are known.

cyberspace The place where people go while dogs are sleeping.

infinity In the time between sleep and waking there is the great nothingness of the nap.

Read the rest on Geist.com: Words Dogs Know

P.S. Another reason why I love Geist is that they published a very short story of mine called Roads out of Rome back in issue #63, two years ago to be precise, that expanded to become one of my favourite sections of Words the Dog Knows. Thanks Geist.
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Roads Out of Rome

Roads Out of Rome
Roads Out of Rome appears in Geist #63, on newsstands now.

All roads lead to Rome. It stands to reason that they lead out of Rome as well. It’s helpful to know someone who has a car. And isn’t afraid to use it. When in Rome, one thing to do not as the Romans do, is to drive. In Roads Out of Rome, my Roman friend Barbara drives me around and I live to tell the tale.

Here’s an excerpt:

“So now I trust Barbara: to not kill us, even when she’s shout-talking in Roman dialect on her mobile phone; to know where we’re going, even if not how to get there; and to always be late, unless I’m late, in which case she will be early. Today I was early and she was very late.”

J. R. Carpenter, Roads Out of Rome

See also: How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome
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